Schmollywood Babylon

A coffee break on the edge of the apocalypse: the politics of Nightmare City

I have always seen Umberto Lenzi as an individual talent yet a difficult person.  He gives me the image of being a strong-willed, and tough person, living in a house jam-packed with war memorabilia.  I also believe he would be in possession of brutally honest opinions about everyone, and everything. I have spoken to several people who swear he foams at the mouth whenever he gets upset. Lenzi himself claims to be the foremost expert of the Second World War in Italy, and perhaps he's right in this assumption. For sure, Lenzi likes to wage war whilst shooting a movie, as more than one actor I know can bear witness to.

Lenzi got his first big break with violent cop movies; far more so than with his earlier peplums and gialli. Afterwards, he dabbled in horror movies, which probably came to him through his work with infamous shockers such as Cannibal Ferox, and though I consider it to be even it's far too serious in subject matter to be considered mere exploitation. The Man From Deep River aka Deep River Savages/Il paese del sesso selvaggio.  However, Lenzi seems to never been comfortable in the realm of horror; even if it’s fun nonsense like Ghosthouse, Black Demons and Hell's Gate, which are entertaining at the very least, from time to time.  To me, it seems that his true calling has always been far more serious…

When the producers offered Lenzi the opportunity of directing Nightmare City, after Enzo G. Castellari called it a day, and turned his back on the genre; it was originally intended to be another routine zombie movie much in the style of Fulci’s worldwide hit, Zombie Flesh Eaters. However, the ambitious director, Lenzi hoped and wanted something else, and aimed to get Franco Nero or Fabio Testi as his leading man. As neither of them were available, he had to choose Hugo Stiglitz – a demand made by the Mexican co-producers. Renowned for his lack of charisma, and possessing a continually bored look; the big movie star Stiglitz strangely adopted the movie and made it a personal project, and nowadays it is difficult to see it without him playing the lead role. When I asked Signor Lenzi, what was the problem with Stiglitz’s attitude in the film; I received and the answer "I had no problems with Hugo; he was a very good guy, but a very bad actor!".  Having seen the film many times, I don't doubt it, however it appears to me that something was obviously troubling the star. I do hope one day to learn the truth.

NightmareCity, or Incubo sulla città contaminata (trans. ‘Nightmare concerning a contaminated city’) as the lyrical original Italian title almost sings to us, is far from being a typical horror movie.  There are a few scenes which borders to horror, such as when the enemy attack the hospital, being shot in darkly lit corridors, and with an ominous score playing in the background. Until the action sets in, entailing Dean Miller’s (Hugo Stiglitz) kicking a lot of contaminated ass until he finds his dear wife, played by a supposedly very naughty Laura Trotter. Rumour has it that she loved to walk on her bare hands, wearing just a skirt, and no panties (!!). As for the remainder of the film, it is shot like Lenzi’s (and his contemporary) "poliziotteschi" (cop thrillers), employing lots of handheld camera movements, close-ups, shaky action, and gritty violence yet not even coming close to those of the gory Grand Guignol horrors directed presented by Lenzi's good friend, Lucio Fulci. Nightmare City is a very different form of horror, in Lenzi's mind; a neo-realistic form of horror.

It is easy to mock and make fun of Lenzi's serious viewpoints on this, his film. Lenzi’s repeated emphasis that it is not a zombie movie are greeted answered with laughter from those who don't care nor value his ideas and thoughts. But I agree with Lenzi, what he says is true; this is no zombie movie. There are no living dead here - just radioactive mutants; people suffering from "radiation sickness". For sure, they are thirsty for human blood, and have gained ‘super-strength’ from the exposure to radioactivity, but those factors do not make them dead (or undead). According to Lenzi, the film is inspired by a true story; the 1976 Seveso disaster in north of Milan in the Lombardy region which spread the carcinogenic dioxin 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin into populated areas.  Also, Lenzi considers it to be an early allegory for the HIV virus, long before Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia dared to approach the subject. This idea might seem to be rather far-fetched, which I tend to agree is, but it is important to note that it also connects with Lenzi's recent troubles in getting a novel he wrote, published owing to it being set in an gay environment.  One can but wonder if he holds the same views in regard to the HIV virus as Swedish director and visionary Roy Andersson, that it from the beginning was manufactured by the government.  Andersson’s view is that it was not intended to be a deadly virus, but somewhere, sometime, somehow events spun out of control and has lead to the becoming the tragedy that it is today.

There are a few other movies in this particular genre, outside the works of George A. Romero, equally as critical of the military and government, as Lenzi’s NightmareCity.  For example, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue by Jorge Grau would be considered another. It is important to remember that it was Lenzi himself who took the script; revising and changing it so it would be what he wanted it to be. I do wonder if there is a different scheme or way of thinking behind the events in NightmareCity, beneath the (seemingly) silly surface. When watching the original Italian language version, the viewer will notice a significant difference not made in the international variant: the military informs us, the viewers, that more planes have arrived with contaminated people. More planes; could this be seen as an invasion?  It raises the questions as to whether all of these planes have really flown over the contaminated area - an area armed to the teeth with weapons. Or whether themselves the military made the flight there?  The military also are very slow and unwilling to advise and warn people - why? Several times it is referred to being a drill; and I believe it is because it IS a drill. The military, in their eternal greediness and stupidity, have created this danger, in order to try out a new weapon, shifting the blame from themselves as perpetrators, and therefore blaming the disaster on something else. The army request the TV-station stop spreading the news, and in anger, Dean Miller (Stiglitz) quits his job of his over-willing boss in obeying the state, thereby trashing every streak of journalistic integrity. Seeing this, it is easy to understand Miller's frustration with the hierarchy, and conservative executives.

The film’s message is simple; everything is a cover-up. Everything is controlled by the state. The state has waged a secret terrorist attack against its own people. Only the hero, Dean Miller, understands it. That is what NightmareCity is about!

In interviews and conversations, Umberto Lenzi has demonstrated to me that he has been an avid anarchist throughout his entire life and career. He is and has been a supporter of anarchist publications like “A/Rivista Anarchica”; a monthly magazine which has been published in Italy since 1971. The critical viewpoint of the state, which he extols in many of his movies; or just movements and cultures based on hierarchy, is clear - and it's even more apparent in NightmareCity. Is this city a metaphor for the future nightmare of what is to happen if the state were to take control of everything? Is the apocalyptic dream of Dean Miller meant as a hint to journalists, to thinkers and modern philosophers, for us all to wake up and realise that we're stuck in a real nightmare; and ultimately the only way for us to wake up is to fight back, abandon the state, (as portrayed by guards, cops, the military and religion in the story) and take control over our own lives and destinies? Is it just a coincidence that the first people who are infected by the mutations are high up in the hierarchy – people such as scientists, government officials, and the military police).

The film itself, NightmareCity, was shot in Spain; and released around the world just five years after the death of right-wing fascist dictator General Francisco Franco.  A film made by a man who seemingly loathes government, capitalism and fascism. In this film, and it’s message; maybe there is something to be read into it, which hasn't been considered previously, nor thought about before .

Maybe Lenzi wants us to do is to take a coffee break now, at the end of the apocalypse. Just like Hugo Stiglitz does with Laura Trotter, in a country café, surrounded by American pop-cultural icons on the walls, and begins reflecting and thinking critically about what's around him (and us).

But what do I know? Ultimately, it's Lenzi's story after all, and it’s his message, not mine. But, I do feel, and I do believe that his underlying message and motivation is that he wants us, you and me, the audience of his film, to think…!

/Fred Anderson

A big thanks to Kit Gavin for cleaning up the grammar, spelling and helping out as an editor for this piece. I owe you one, man! <3

Antichristmas: Santa Claus (René Cardona, 1959)

From the mind behind Survive! and Wrestling Women versus the Murderous Robot comes the ultimate trip into Santaland, the acid-oozing Santa Vs. Satan adventure Santa Claus. You know, there's no point in even try to write down a synopsis for the story - it's actually so thin, so stupid, it's hard to even try. But let's say this: Santa gets in trouble when one of the Devil's minions, Mr Pitch, gets out and tries to sabotage Christmas Eve with his shennenigans! 

To be honest, it's a quite glossy looking cheapie. Cardona has always been a pro and uses wide, nice shots over sparkling, over-worked sets. José Elías Moreno as Santa does a good job, nothing to complain about there. He's big and jolly, silly and dangerously close to behave like a child molester. José Luis Aguirre 'Trotsky', yes, that's how he's credited, is fun as the little devil. Except when he's chewing the scenery like there's no tomorrow. And he does that all the time. 

Let me explain how this movie begins: close your eyes and see one hundred children, divided into groups of ethnicity. They all look terribly unhappy, like something is holding their parents at gunpoint behind the camera and they're also forced to sing silly stereotypical songs represantive for their country - except the "African" children who just dances around like the primitive natives everyone expects them to be. This goes on for at least 10 minutes, one group of children after the other. After that we're treated to a unique insight to Santa's observatory, which has a huge computer-like thingie with human parts and Merlin - the one and only - doing his magic in another room. 

This narration explains the place quite good: "This is Santa's Magic Observatory. What wonderful intstruments! The Ear Scope! The Teletalker, that knows everything! The Cosmic Telescope! The Master Eye! Nothing that happens on Earth is unknown to Santa Claus!" Alright? You got it? Good! Let's continue!

The kids are doing all the work, so we're basically talking about child labor here. Santa's a smart dude. He knows that midgets are more expensive than kids. But hey, someone need to make the toys for the millions of nice children out there - the bad ones goes to hell, so you know. What we from hell is something right out from Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World, just a little bit more creepy. In a scene only available in the Mexican version we see the doomed souls walk by, watched by a bunch of dancing devils. 

This spirit of Mexican Christmas, gotta love it!

Then Santa takes his gigantic toy reindeers and travels out in the world to give gifts to kids - including poor Lupina, who have a dream-vision surrounded by creepy, life-size dancing dolls. The stuff nightmares are made of. But somehow she survives this ordeal.

You know, it's hard to write about Santa Claus because it's so terribly stupid and empty. But it's also entertaining, but far from a psychotronic masterpiece. It would have needed more hell, more devils and more psychedelic imagery to satisfy those needs before the good old religous brainwash-message at the end!

Still... I like it. I can almost recommend it. I mean, it's out on Blu-ray! Come on! You need to own it!

Birds of Prey (René Cardona Jr, 1987)

Birds of Prey is the more generic title of René Cardona Jr's Beaks: the Movie, a co-production between Mexico and Spain (and probably a dozen other countries). But why do you name a movie Beaks: the Movie? And add to this that Juan Piquer Simón the year later released Slugs: the Movie! I wonder what was going on there, can we still expect Insects: the Movie or maybe Cyborg Dog: the Movie - oh wait, Brian Yuzna directed the last one, almost anyway (2004's Rottweiler, basically a remake of Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's El Perro from 1979, but that's another story!). 

Birds of Prey (I will call it that from now on, Beaks sounds so silly) is one of Cardona Jr's weaker efforts, but he's a pro and still gave us a decent-looking movie with cheap gore and impressive animal attacks. The story is very thin - almost non-existant: Michelle Johnson (who later did Waxwork and Dr Giggles) plays Vanessa, a TV-reporter. Her cameraman is played by cute Christopher Atkins (seven years after The Blue Lagoon) and together they go on an adventure of a lifetime!!! No, not really. But Vanessa suspects that there's something wrong with the birds in Spain (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) and soon they find themselves and everyone else under attack from every kinda bird there is! That's it.

It's almost shot like a sequel to Hitchcock's The Birds - and someone is mentioning that there was a big similar bird attack years ago, which seems like a clear reference to Hitch's first movie - but fails to deliver the same kind of depth and characters. Most of the actors do good, but the script is so thin and underwritten that it's very easy to lose interest in what's happening. Most of the attacks are very similar - humans have fun, birds attack in slow-motion - but at least Cardona tries to make something fun out of it and puts the attacks in a lot of different places, including a train and up in the sky. 

At least it's bloody and the effects when people gets their faces ripped off is fun (and not especially well-made), but it works. A more disturbing thing is how many real birds that gets killed, especially in the beginning. So if you don't want to see fine, proud birds getting shot to pieces in super slow-motion, stay away from this film. It's a pity, 'cause it could have been a lot more fun. Now there's a fairly high human body count instead, which is alright and the movie itself looks gorgeous. 

Cardona Jr, just like his father, was an expert in cheap and extremely good-looking spectacular genre movies. They're both favorites of mine and especially junior. It's like he knew exactly what made a good exploitation film. Just check out his 1980 action classic "Hostages" (starring Hugo Stiglitz!), a movie that's a crazy mix of about everything from that time when it comes to action and thriller - from disaster to home invasion. It's awesome in it's trashiness. 

Birds of Prey is not for everyone. But it could have made a bigger splash among the cult fans if it didn't killed so many real birds. Lets keep fantasy from reality in movies, something I've always felt is important. There's NEVER need to kill an animal to make entertainment. 

The Night of a Thousand Cats (René Cardona Jr, 1972)

I have a minor obsession with Mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz. I feel in love with his bored performance in Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City and since then it's been a pleasure to realize that he's not that bored always. He must have hated starring in Nightmare City. So much. Somehow he also was a sex symbol in Mexico during the 70's and I didn't understand why - until now. In Rene Cardona Jr's The Night of a Thousand Cats, also co-produced by its star, Hugo actually look very good and fresh. There's a lot of bare flesh and the women loves him (not usually for any kind of obscure movie star though...). So how about the movie itself? I've seen the shorter US version, just over an hour long, released on a very nice DVD from Code Red. It's not a good movie... but it didn't bore me. 

Hugo is... Hugo, a playboy millionaire who flies around in his helicopter and picks up lonely housewives, takes them to his castle, have sex with them and then kills them and feeds them to the thousand cats he have in the basement. He also have a mute and retarded servant named Dorgo (played by former wrestler Gerardo Zepeda aka El Chiquilin!) who he plays chess with sometimes. And then something happens and then it's over.

Now they've cut 20-30 minutes for story from this movie - and I wonder what the hell is gone from it? Must have been a side story, maybe more sex - I really don't know. As it is now it works fine for being an hour long and it's just a series of pick-up scenes and then a non-gory kill (often strangulation and stuff like that). I have to see the longer version someday, but it's not a priority. So, Hugo mingles around being awesome. He's so cocky he's a walking human sized hard-on with a cool beard and sunglasses. Just the presence of him makes the movie worth watching. The directing by Cardona is competent an have some stunningly beautiful slow-motion scenes, one chase scene reminded of what De Palma did in The Fury. 

The bad thing with it is the cats themselves. Or more how they're treated. Hugo handles them quite rough, to say the least, and they look very stressed being so many cats inside that big cage. Cats have nine lives, but it wouldn't surprise me of some of these cats dropped dead just because of the stress, heat from the lamps, being tossed around like dolls etc. I've seen worse animal treatment in movies, but it's still very unnecessary.

In the end The Night of a Thousand Cats is a pretty pointless movie, but it have Hugo, it have ladies, it have Dorgo - and it's a Mexican horror movie, which by itself is very cool. But it's probably just for extreme collectors like me.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (Edward Nassour, 1956)

Willis H. O'Brien was THE man who made stop-motion animation popular and revolutionized the cinema with 1925's The Lost World and of course 1933's King Kong (and Son of Kong). He inspired more or less every animator that came afterwards, including his own student - Ray Harryhausen. But the man himself was a troubled genius, always fighting to get his own projects off the ground. It didn't help that his first wife shot their two children and tried to take suicide afterwards. It was an unhappy marriage from the beginning and it's said it made him deeply depressed, suffering from alcholism and gambling problems. 

I have no idea what happen after that, but he stayed in business until his death 1962. The last movie he worked with was the classic slapstick/action comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, where he animated the fire truck sequence at the end. But during the years between he had a dream, and it was to make the ultimate western-themed dinosaur movie. He developed tons of projects set in Arizona, with cowboys or Indians, but the one that stayed the longest was Gwangi - who later, after his death, was made by Harryhausen. But during the fifties the b-movie brothers Nassour bought the idea and produced The Beast of Hollow Mountain as a co-production with Mexico. It's also the first stop-motion movie to be shot in colour and in cinemascope. Still a low-budget affair and very far from a good movie, which is a pity.

Much on the problems can be blamed on the script, co-written by O'Brien under the colourful alias of El Toro Estrella (which mean, I guess, The Star Bull or something similar). It spends way too much time on the drama around the farm of an american cowboy who moved to Mexico to raise bulls, and extremely little time on the beast itself. Cattle start to disappear around the neighbourbood and he and his friends is trying to figure out why, and during the last twenty minutes of the film we finally get the answer.

A dinosaur.

But that wasn't so much of a secret anyway. Those last minutes is packed with dinosaur action, which is good, the bad thing is that the dino himself looks quite primitive. The animation, not by O'Brien, was shot using something called Replacement Animation. It means that each movement was shot with a different puppet. This works works quite fine when the dino is running and walking - I can see how it looks slight less jerky, with finer movements, more organic, but in every other scene it looks terrible. Small movements just doesn't work this way and with something that should look realistic. I'm pretty sure Harryhausen used a similar way of animation for some of his short childrens movies, but those where far more stylized and unrealistic, which makes it easier to animate. 

The Beast of Hollow Mountain is a must for collectors of dinosaur cinema and Willis O'Brien completists, but I can honestly say that everyone else can skip it. Watch Valley of Gwangi instead, it has a miniature pony, James Franciscus and some awesome dinosaur scenes! A classic family movie that still works excellent.